Uni Bloc Week 1

Uni was a culture shock. It was lovely to catch up with everyone and hear about their placement experiences. In my friendship group there was such a mixture, some people were so glad to be back at uni, others were desperate for the learning bloc to be over so they could get back to placement. There were plenty of gripes all round, especially on the lack of organisation, turns out I’m not the only one who has struggled with that. I surprised myself by being in the group longing to get back to placement, I’m rather glad that I’m still there one day a week to make up hours.

The new modules started – creatively named ‘Education in Nursing practice 2’ and ‘Nursing Fundamentals 2’ at least I’m in no danger of forgetting what I’m studying. With the new modules came new module leaders. These module leaders seem to think that despite all of us being legally adults and apparently responsible enough to deal with patient care, we are not mature enough to get into groups by ourselves. In our seminar, we were assigned groups by the module leader giving everyone a number. I think if I had been in secondary school I would have been offended. I mean who needs someone to do that past Year Three? In a stunning display of maturity myself, I left the classroom. Why? Because I can’t deal with the chaos that is 25 people trying to move around the room to get into these randomly allocated groups. It’s a waste of time. Unfortunately it does mean I have some reading to catch up on. Then again, isn’t that the motto of every university student: Must. Read. More.

For once having a biochemistry background didn’t make me feel like a failed scientist, it made me exceedingly glad to be one of the few people who could make sense of the pharmacology lecture. In A level biology, Active Transport is one of the more difficult concepts, by degree level, it’s a simple mechanism. The pharmacology lecturer assumed everyone would have a reasonable understanding of it. Most people were utterly bamboozled. The flipped classroom, do your own learning and consolidate in lectures concept has potential, but there’s really not enough science support for people who don’t have much of a science background. Is it me or is this a cost-cutting exercise at the expense of our education?